'Love of Life,' by Jack London, Part Two

01Love of Life by Jack London Part 2 The man cursed and threw the empty gun on the ground.

02He uttered a cry of pain as he started to drag himself to his feet.

03It was a slow task.

04When he finally stood on his feet, he needed another minute or two to straighten himself so that he could stand as a man should stand.

05He climbed a small hill and looked about.

06There were no trees, no bushes.

07There was nothing but grassy, gray plants and some gray rocks and gray streams.

08The sky was gray.

09There was no sun or promise of sun.

10He had no idea where north was.

11And he had forgotten how he had come to this spot the night before.

12But he was not lost.

13He knew that.

14Soon he would come to the land of the little sticks.

15He felt that it lay to the left somewhere, not far.

16Possibly it was over the next low hill.

17He returned to prepare his pack for traveling.

18He assured himself of the existence of his three separate portions of matches, although he did not stop to count them.

19But he did pause, trying to decide what to do about a bag made from moose skin.

20It was not large.

21It could be covered by his two hands.

22But he knew it weighed fifteen pounds.

23As much as all the rest of the pack.

24This worried him.

25He finally set it to one side and proceeded to roll the pack.

26He paused again to gaze at the moose skin bag.

27He picked it up quickly, with a quick glance around him.

28It was as if he thought the cruel wasteland was trying to steal it.

29When he rose to his feet, the bag was included in the pack on his back.

30He started walking to the left, stopping now and again to eat muskik berries.

31His ankle had stiffened, but the pain of it was nothing compared with the pain of his stomach.

32His hunger was so great he could not keep his mind steady on the course he had to follow, to arrive at the land of the little sticks.

33The berries did not help his hunger.

34Their bitter taste only made his tongue and mouth sore.

35He came to a valley where some birds rose from the rocky places.

36He came to a valley where some birds were so good.

37He came to a valley where some birds were so good.

38He came to a valley where some birds were so good.

39He came to a valley where some birds were so good.

40He came to a valley where some birds were so good.

41He came to a valley where some birds were so good.

42He came to a valley where some birds were so good.

43He came to a valley where some birds were so good.

44He came to a valley where some birds were so good.

45He came to a valley where some birds were so good.

46He came to a valley where some birds were so good.

47He came to a valley where some birds were so good.

48He came to a valley where some birds were so good.

49He came to a valley where some birds were so good.

50But he did not notice this.

51So great was his desire for food.

52Always the birds rose before him.

53Their cry of, Kerr, kerr, kerr, sounded as if they were laughing at him.

54He cursed them and cried aloud at them with their own cry.

55Once he came upon one that must have been asleep.

56He did not see it until it flew up in his face from behind some rocks.

57He grasped the air as suddenly as the rise of the bird.

58And there remained in his hand three tail feathers.

59As he watched its flight, he hated it.

60He felt that it had done him some great wrong.

61Then he returned to where he had left his pack and lifted it again to his back.

62As the day continued, he came into valleys where game was more plentiful.

63Twenty or more caribou passed by within easy shooting distance of a gun.

64He felt a wild desire to run after them, certain that he could catch them.

65A small black animal came toward him, carrying a bird in his mouth.

66The man shouted.

67It was a fearful cry, but the animal, leaping away in fright, did not drop the bird.

68Late in the afternoon, he followed a stream which flowed through some thick grass.

69He grasped these grasses firmly near the root and pulled up what looked like a vegetable.

70It was round and white.

71Eagerly, he sank his teeth into it.

72It was tender on the outside and gave the promise of food.

73But its inside was hard and stringy.

74And like the berries, it had no food value.

75Nevertheless, he threw off his pack and went among the grasses on his hands and knees, eating the grass like a cow.

76He was very tired and often wished to rest, to lie down and to sleep.

77But he was led on, not so much by his desire to find the land of the little sticks, as by his hunger.

78He looked into every pool of water, searching without success for things to eat.

79Then, as the night darkened, he discovered a single small fish in one of these pools.

80He plunged his whole arm in, but the fish escaped his grasp.

81He reached for it with both hands and stirred the mud at the bottom of the pool.

82During his excitement, he fell in, getting wet as high as his shoulders.

83Then the water was too cloudy with mud to allow him to see the fish.

84He was forced to wait until the mud had again settled to the bottom.

85Then he tried again, until the water was again filled with mud.

86But he could not wait.

87He took a tin container from his pack and began to empty the water from the pool.

88He threw it out wildly at first, and so short a distance that it flowed into the pool again.

89He worked more carefully, trying to be calm.

90But his heart was pounding and his hands were trembling.

91At the end of a half an hour, the pool was nearly dry.

92Not a cupful of water remained.

93And there was no fish.

94Then he discovered a narrow opening among the stones through which it had escaped into a larger pool, a pool which he could not empty in a night and a day.

95If he had known of the opening, he could have closed it with a rock before he began, and the fish would have been his.

96Thus he thought, and he sank down upon the wet earth.

97At first he cried softly to himself, and then he cried loudly to the uncaring wasteland around him.

98He built a fire and warmed himself by drinking hot water.

99Then he built a camp on the rocks as he had done the night before.

100The last things he did were to be certain that his matches were dry, and to wind his watch.

101The blankets were wet.

102His ankle pained him, but he knew only that he was hungry.

103Through his restless sleep he dreamed of feasts and food, served in all imaginable manners.

104When he awakened, he was cold and sick.

105There was no sun.

106The grey of the earth and sky had become deeper.

107A cold wind was blowing, and snow was whitening the hilltops.

108The air about him grew white with snow as he made a fire and boiled more water.

109But it was wet snow, half rain.

110At first it melted as soon as it hit the earth, but it continued falling, covering the ground, and destroying his fire.

111This was the signal for him to put his pack on his back and struggle forward.

112He knew not where.

113He was not concerned with the land of the little sticks, nor with Bill and the cash under the upturned boat by the river Deese.

114He was mad because of hunger.

115He did not notice the course he followed, except that it led him through the bottoms of the valleys.

116He felt his way through the wet snow to the watery muskeg berries, and was guided by touch as he pulled up the grass by the roots.

117But it had no taste, and did not satisfy his hunger.

118He had no fire that night, nor hot water.

119He pulled his blanket around him to sleep the broken sleep of hunger.

120The snow became a cold rain.

121He awakened many times to feel it falling on his upturned face.

122Day came.

123It was a gray day with no sun.

124It had ceased raining.

125The sharpness of his hunger had departed.

126There was a dull pain in his stomach.

127But it did not trouble him so much.

128He was more in control of himself.

129And once again he was interested in the land of little sticks, and the cash by the river Deese.

130He cut the remains of one of his blankets into strips and bound his bleeding feet.

131He used one of the strips on his swelled ankle and prepared himself for a day of travel.

132When he was ready to pick up his pack, he paused long before deciding to keep the moose skin bag.

133But when he departed, it went with him.

134The snow had melted under the rain, and only the hilltops showed white.

135The sun appeared, and he succeeded in locating the way he had been traveling.

136But now he knew that he was lost.

137Perhaps he had wandered too far to the left.

138He now turned to the right to return to his true course.

139Although the hunger pains were not as great as they had been, he realized that he was weak.

140He was forced to pause for frequent rests.

141At those times, he ate the muskeg berries and grasses.

142His tongue felt dry and large, and it tasted bitter in his mouth.

143His heart troubled him very much.

144When he had traveled a few minutes, it would begin pounding.

145Then it would leap in a series of beats that made him feel faint.

146In the middle of the day, he found two small fish in a large pool.

147It was impossible to empty it.

148But he was calmer now, and he managed to catch them.

149They were no bigger than his little finger.

150But now he was not particularly hungry.

151The dull pain in his stomach had been growing duller.

152It almost seemed that his stomach was asleep.

153He ate the fish with great care.

154The eating was an act of pure reason.

155Although he had no desire to eat, he knew that he must eat to live.

156In the evening, he caught three more small fish, eating two and saving the third for breakfast.

157The sun had dried the wet plants, and he was able to build a fire.

158He had not traveled more than ten miles that day.

159The next day, traveling whenever his heart permitted, he went no more than five miles.

160But his stomach did not give him any pain.

161It seemed to be sleeping.

162He was now in a strange country, too, and the caribou were becoming more plentiful.

163There were wolves also.

164Their howls could be heard across the land.

165And once he saw three of them crossing his path.

166Another night passed, and in the morning, being more reasonable, he untied the leather string that held the moose-skin bag.

167From its open mouth poured a yellow stream of gold dust.

168He divided the gold into two equal parts.

169One half wrapped in a piece of a blanket.

170He hid among a large formation of rocks.

171The other half he returned to his bag.

172He also began to use strips of the one remaining blanket for his feet.

173He still kept his gun, because there were cartridges in that cache by the River Dees.

174This was a cloudy day, and this day hunger waked in him again.

175He was very weak.

176It was no uncommon thing now for him to fall.

177Once he fell into a bird's nest.

178There were four tiny birds, a day or so old, no more than a mouthful.

179He ate them greedily, putting them alive into his mouth and crushing them like eggshells between his teeth.

180The mother bird flew about him with cries of anger.

181He used his gun as a club with which to hit her, but she flew beyond his reach.

182He threw stones at her and by chance broke a wing.

183She then ran away, dragging the broken wing, with him following her.

184The little birds had not satisfied his hunger.

185He jumped along on his painful ankle, throwing stones and screaming loudly at times.

186At other times he struggled along silently, picking himself up patiently when he fell, all rubbing his eyes with his hand when faintness threatened to overpower him.

187The bird led him across some wet ground in the bottom of the valley.

188He discovered footprints in the wet grasses.

189They were not his own.

190He could see that.

191They must be bills.

192But he could not stop, because the mother bird was running ahead.

193He would catch her first.

194Then he would return and examine the footprints.

195He tired the mother bird, but he tired himself also.

196She lay on her side, breathing heavily.

197He lay on his side a dozen feet away, unable to move toward her.

198And as he recovered, she recovered.

199She flew beyond reach as his hungry hands stretched out to catch her.

200The hunt started again.

201Night darkened, and she escaped.

202He fell because of weakness, cutting his face.

203He did not move for a long time.

204Then he rolled on his side.

205He wound his watch, and lay there until morning.

206It was another grey day.

207Half of his last blanket had been used for foot wrappings.

208He failed to find Bill's trail again.

209It was not important.

210His hunger drove him on.

211He wondered if Bill, too, were lost.

212By the middle of the day, the weight of his pack became too great.

213Again, he divided the gold, this time merely pouring half of it on the ground.

214In the afternoon, he threw away the rest of it.

215There remained now only the half of the blanket, the tin container, and the gun.

216The hallucination began to trouble him.

217He felt certain that one cartridge remained.

218It was in his gun, and he had not seen it.

219However, he knew all the time that the gun was empty.

220But the hallucination continued.

221He fought it for hours.

222Then he opened his gun eagerly, only to find nothing inside.

223He struggled ahead for half an hour, when the hallucination arose again.

224Again he fought it, and still it continued.

225To give himself relief, he again opened the gun and found it empty.

226At times his mind wandered even further.

227But these moments away from reality were brief, because always the pains of hunger forced him to return.

228Once as his mind was wandering, he was returned to reality by a sight that almost caused him to faint.

229Before him stood a horse.

230A horse!

231He could not believe his eyes.

232A thick cloud was in his eyes, flashing with points of light.

233He rubbed his eyes fiercely to clear his sight.

234Then he saw before him, Not a horse, But a great brown bear.

235The animal was studying him with curiosity.

236The animal was in his eyes, The animal was in his eyes, The animal was in his eyes, The animal was in his eyes, The animal was in his eyes,